Revision as of 20:54, 14 January 2013

Contents

Livemedia-modifier

Introduction

As of Fedora 17 all disk images can be produced using Fedora tools. Disk images created for the Pandaboard require an additional step before use due to the unique paritioning requirements, and the nessecity of the 'MLO' being the first file written to the 'boot' partition. Vesatile express also requires the user extract the kernel, initramfs and kermodules in order to boot the disk image. The 'livemedia-modifier' tool was written to augment the output of 'livemedia-creator', and prepare the disk images for use.

Pandaboard

Images can be created for the Pandaboard using 'livemedia-creator', these images will not be bootable until they have been 'fixed'. The script will mount the disk image partitions, reformat the boot partition, and copy the files from the root filesystem in the correct order. This will result in a bootable Pandaboard disk image.

You will first need to create the Pandaboard disk image using 'livemedia-creator'

Once this has completed you are now ready to copy the image to SD card.

dd if=<image-location>.img of=/dev/<location-of-sd>

Insert into your Pandaboard and boot.

Versatile Express

The disk image produced by 'livemedia-creator' for Versatile Express (vexpress) emulation using QEMU, will require an additional step before use. In order to boot the image you will need to extract the kernel, initramfs and kernel modules. This can be done manually or with use of the provided modifier tool.
You will first need to create the Pandaboard disk image using 'livemedia-creator'

Extracting the kernel and initramfs

When you upgrade the kernel on vexpress, you will then need to extract the kernel and initramfs from the disk image for use during subsequent boots. The livemedia-modifier script automates this process, and with the appropriate option will not create a tarball, but only extract the needed bits for booting:

Kirkwood

The Kirkwood image includes a disk image with a EXT3 boot partition. Some versions of U-Boot do not support booting from this file system and will therefore need to be reformatted to VFAT (FAT32). The Livemedia-modifier tool will automate this process for you, extracting the files from the 'boot' partition, reformatting, then replacing the files for use in your Kirkwood device.
Using livemedia-modifier:

The image has now been modified and includes '/boot' on a VFAT partition.

Root Filesystem Only

With the livemedia-modifier tool it is also possible to extract the root filesystem from a disk image, allowing uers to supply their own kernel. The tool will mount the disk image, remove the modules directory and create a tarball of the root filesystem.
Below is an example of using livemedia-modifier.